Northwest Syria Cash Working Group Earthquake Response Bulletin

1. MPC response overview

As of 23 March 2023, a total of 360,787 persons or 74,612 families have been reached by MPC interventions. A total of USD 10.9 million has been disbursed by 14 implementing agencies across 22 sub-districts.

Only beneficiaries who have received at least USD 100/family/month have been included.

2. Map of MPC beneficiaries and collective/reception centres

Data on cash response extracted from FSL earthquake tracker on March 17 2023. Data on collective centres extracted from March 15 2023.

A revised version of the map will be available for further reporting with the revised 4Ws that includes all available codes for temporay sites.

3. Geographic breakdown of beneficiaries

Coverage is highest in Afrin and Harim districts, which have been worst-hit by the earthquake.

The current distribution of beneficiaries appears to be aligned with the worst-hit districts: Harim and Afrin. The figures below only pertain to populations within the AOC of Northwest Syria and not representative of the entire district’s population.

When reviewing the district-level spread of casualties and totally- and partially-damaged houses, Harim and Afrin do stand out in terms of the magnitude of the damage. Notably, the share of damaged houses in Afrin is much higher than in Harim.

Following them, Jebel Saman and Jisr-ash-Shugur have the next most severe damage, although, as can be seen from the table below, their populations (within the area of control) are comparatively smaller.

Assessments are still ongoing and the CWG will update these tables when new data becomes available.

Although the earthquake damage is not as severe in A’zaz, Al Bab, Jarablus, Idleb and Jisr-ash-Shugur, a much higher proportion of needs in these areas remain unmet, given the low percentages of persons reached.

The establishment of subnational targets at the district and sub-district level, will go some way towards clarifying how resources should be allocated across the affected areas.

3.1 Breakdown by partner and district

Harim, by far and away has the highest concentration of partners (12), double that of the next highest district (Afrin).

3.2 Scatterplot of sub-districts

The plot below shows the total population of each sub-district on the x-axis (for the moment, all persons in these areas are assumed to be affected and are included in the PIN) and the number of beneficiaries on the y-axis.

The size of each point indicates the number of dead or wounded persons there per 100,000.

Overall, we see fair alignment between the magnitude of the needs (total population) and the number of beneficiaries – this is evidenced by the blue line showing a positive relationship.

However, we do note several mismatches – Dana seems to have received an outsized share of beneficiaries, especially when considering the casualty rate. And Kafr Takharim seems to have been allocated relatively fewer resources in comparison to the death toll there. The response in Dana may be explained by a number of variables outside the scope of the data collected by the earthquake response tracker, such as population movements. Did earthquake survivors displace to Dana with the knowledge that it was a well-served area, where a number of partners were already operational? The CWG will conduct more consultations with partners to understand such disparities.

4. Cash response actors and cash disbursed

In the scatterplot below, each point is a single cash working group partner. The x-axis indicates the number of beneficiaries reached per agency and the y-axis indicates the number of communities (admin4) reached.

USD 10.9 million has been distributed across 155 communities and 22 sub-districts in NW Syria.

The table below summarises the information in the scatterplot above in tabular form:

4.1 USD disbursed by partner

There is very good compliance with CWG standards on the transfer values of multipurpose cash interventions, as can be seen by the usd_per_fam column in the table below.

Below is a breakdown of beneficiaries and families reached by cash-based activities of all values, not just those that qualify as MPC.

5. UNHCR site tracker – searchable table

Data from UNHCR site tracker. Extracted 15 March 2023.